EXCEPT WHERE INDICATED, THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ON THIS PAGE ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE MILWAUKEE COURIER

“We Have a Moral Responsibility to Disobey Unjust Laws.” MARTIN LUTHER KING

February 18, 2017

Mary Freeman President, ShopBranch8: Inventors of the Yoga Suit President, Cream City Enterprises, Producers of the film, ZORBA THE BUDDHA Founder, Milwaukee Yoga Movement “Imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.” William Blake

If there has ever been a time in the history of our Nation where Black America needs to Unite around an issue, now is the time because the number one cash crop in the world and all of her profits are being stolen by the 1% in our society.

The Crop is the Cannabis Plant.

For generations in this country, we have been calling our men, mostly our darker men, criminals for growing, selling or distributing the Plant. We have destroyed their lives and their families.

And now all over our Nation we are calling our men, mostly white men, capitalists while leaving our darker brothers in prison for the very same Plant.

How can we live in a consciousness that continues to allow this to happen?

That is why Full Legalization of the Cannabis Plant is the Most Important Social Justice Issue of Our Time.

Since 2010, I have been actively involved in Fully Legalizing the Cannabis Plant in the State of Wisconsin.

Seven years later I read in this week’s Milwaukee’s “Shepherd Express,” the Issue of the Week is, “Let’s Legalize Medical Marijuana.”

Up to this point, I thought “The Shepherd” was led by forward thinkers. I was wrong.

You would think I would be happy this is finally “an issue” for the “Shepherd.”

This is progress, but I urge you to look deeper. Understand this is not progress at all; it is merely the 1% of our society who controls everything already, wanting to control the Cannabis Plant too… through “medical marijuana.”

It is wrong and unjust. We must not go down this very sick path. It will make the rich richer and the poor sicker because we will all need a doctor’s prescription to receive what should be rightfully ours as adults to use.

This system takes the profits away from the middle man and gives it only to the highly educated. The rest of us need to be sick in order to lawfully use the Plant, while the doctors and pharmacists laugh all the way to the bank.

People think Cannabis has been legalized for medical use first, it has to be legalized that way.

Let me remind you WE ARE THE PEOPLE. WE CAN DO WHAT WE WANT AS LONG AS WE WRITE IT INTO LAW.

We Wisconsinites Can and Must be the First State in the Nation to bypass “medicinal marijuana” and join the 8 other states and Fully Legalize the Cannabis Plant for Adult Use. In doing so, we will create a community of entrepreneurs and scientists and artists and build the industry in our inner city where the people who have suffered most since Cannabis prohibition have the opportunity to heal, and to prosper and be free.